The suicide of the African American race “The Suicide of the African American Race� I'm writing these words to those who are willing to understand the thought and the complexity of the struggle of the African American race, and what we as a people have gone through, than they will understand as an individual to take the time to look at all the obstacles that are impeding the pathway of their success than you will understand what I'm trying to convey. In this particular writings I attempted to look closely and understand the difficulties of the inner structure that being built and what causing a major problem amount young African American youth. So I would discuss that our youth are suffering from dissolution of prior slavery and its history. The mental effects that can bring about the madness in a mental state of mind which in my observation is brought on by a deep feeling of inferiority complex as they look back on their history. If we viewed history in it's in entirety, we can maybe understand this article of the history of mental health and reference its application to the African American experience. I believe it was Robert Meinsma's writing Brief History of Mental Therapy, which offer a view of philosophical and medical views that included nearly a thousand entries. However, this maybe a very incomprehensive documents boasting fewer than five entries pertaining to the experiences of people of African heritage. A similar criticism can be offered of the time-line compiled by the American Psychological Association. African-Americans have been presented in America dating back to at least 1619 when the first African indentured servants arrived in America. So in this particular essay I have attempted to supplement the official records by offering a few accounts of African-American psychiatric survivors' experiences, and the philosophy and policies that guided the treatment of our ancestors and which still influence our treatment today. As this point I can recognize the entry of mental problems as they existed than, and to me this is an over extension of what's really going on in the African American community today. To me knowing that you are of an ancestry of slavery and you are unable to deal with that history will cause self-destruction in a person.
Page 2 A review of the history of African-American psychiatric survivors would quickly distant the reader of the notion that the process of recording history is political in some cases as an underling process to belittle those without the proper backbone to endure. One of the earliest records dealing with the issue of insanity among the AfricanAmericans was in 1745 when the South Carolina Colonial assembly took up the case of Kate, a slave woman, who had been accused of killing a child. After being placed in the local jail, it was determined that Kate was "out of her senses" so she was not brought to trial for that act of violence. However, the problem of how to care for Kate was an issue since her owner was too poor to pay for her confinement and South Carolina had made no provisions for the public maintenance of slaves. Ultimately, the colonial assembly passed an act that made each of the rural community responsible for the public maintenance of lunatic slaves whose owners was unable to care for. Not surprisingly, there is no further record of what happened to Kate or what circumstances led to the murder of the child. So to me this problem can be construed as the beginning of a problem set into motion without visualizing the consequences of such act if it is allowed to continue I believe this is now reaching the young of today. Who has a built-in assessment of the past and who feel their people has been exploited in some way which is solely gave way to a inner problem of ancestral and person condemnation. I have experience this with a few of my juveniles who were rebelling in some way toward authority. The first thing that came out of their mouth was the problems that any race that maybe difference than our own race has caused their family in some way and why they can't excel in life because of it. No matter how often we address this issue there will always be that stumbling block and we as a people are dancing around it. It so easy to address this issue by explaining the situation of the past, and the progress we have achieved to date. And still it is a hate toward whatever progress we have attained means nothing to them. Yes we do have those young African Americans who are not the fabric as mentioned but who has move away from the insanity of self-destruction. But it is the few dissidents that grab the baton causing all of the headlines, of the news media and we assume it as a widespread problem.
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Even if we are concern as to the problem spreading nationwide hence we have a major problem arising all over the nation as rebellion gain more weigh as time goes by. So when I'm confronted with youth who are steadfast in their mindset of antiestablishment. Which I see in most cases is a marching to the tone; I don't care if I'm incarcerated. And then we are pounding the pavement, protesting the rights gone wrong. So it will take time to erase that inner feeling of total rebellion that are imbedded in our youth, the same applies as to segregationist of the pass, those who were pump up the pain, had to go through a learning process themselves to reverse that hate they had for a people, because they were a living thing, and they could not erase them from the planet. So our intuition or perception or even instinct are still being inundated with theories of the past as being factorial and will never change because of the inner mental inkling process in our subconscious mind and even as deep as the preconscious mind, which in some cases can't be erased. Consequently we have built an individual who will always feel they have no hope and will continue to forge ahead in self-destruction. Who is the guilty one's who developed the Frankenstein syndrome of creating the person who will excel in the prison life only which is a commodity being highly developed today and not for profit at least for the African American race, but a commodity for others in the incarceration stock exchange, just to profit. I wonder how many of us could have went through and experienced that history of slavery and still are able to retain our faculties intact not too many. Because of the restrains and pressures that may have been placed on us we would have went mad causing a mental relapse never to be regained so our faculties that of a slave will continue to take us to a decaying point of life. So why should we go off the point to that state of mind, it was a way to escape the holocaust they were enduring as slavers and as observing the history of slavery. So we are entering into holocaust phase #2 that of our youth destroying everything around then in an attempt to erase the mayhem of our past as being a product of slaves.
Page 4 As a people we are consistently trying our best to be accepted and still we are snowed under with those who are so forceful in encasing us behind to a time we were considered to be a class of nothingness. I hate using the terminology nothingness but it appears we have to deal with prejudice as it sneaks up behind us every day of our life in some outward appearance that affected us inward. Every day we beat the pavement to be considered to be a normal people just asking to be hugged in accepted by others. So we are eating, drinking, abusing those around us, playing our music loud trying to drum out what is really mushrooming in our heads in an attempt to make ourselves feel better , or to forget in this life. And some of us are praying singing the gospel day after day hoping that god will come to our aid when we arrive in heaven. So the youth hopefully one day will be reprogrammed to respect their past and themselves, and if that's true than we can deal with the problems on earth and back-off from the negativity of our overwhelming deep ethnicity stigma that has been attached to us for years, it is some who can move from that mindset but others are embedded in that destruction mode. It is the knowing deep down inside that we are created in god's image as all people and equal in the eyes of all his children. And not to let the detractors cloud the image that was so perfectly put in place, we cannot allow our downfalls causing those of concern to head into a funnel-vision of self-destruction. It could be something out of the ordinary as what happen to my granddaughter. The story can be told as a child wanting money for herself. So she asked a few of her friends it they knew of anywhere she could work to make extra money. One of her friends gave her a telephone number of a person to contact, if she really wanted to work. She was so eager that she asked me if I could take her to her reporting station which was in Hampton Virginia. I didn't really have anything on my agenda that would limit me from taking her to the site at 5:00pm and returning at 10:00pm, each of the two days she was to work, which was Friday and Saturday. So we made a pack that I would do this for her. After she had finished her Friday's schedule she only had Saturday to go.
Page 5 Well on Saturday I was picking her up as it was her normal departure time of 10:00pm. As she was somewhat off scheduled and had asked, I to come by at 10:00pm but I had to wait for at least 35 minutes before she appeared ready to depart the site. We both got into the car as we started to leave I asked her how much money did you make for 10-hour for the entire weekend. She turned and looked in the eyes and said I made $14.00 for 10-hours. I was shocked and bewildered. My reply was come on stop lying; you know that you made more than that for two days. No she said listen grandpa I only make $14.00. I was dumbfounded and was ready to return to speak to someone in charge. But I knew that I needed to calm myself down before approaching anyone about this issue. So as I sat at home going over the entire scenario, trying to justify the lack of concern she was given and the advantage of using a child as if they were a slave, this is what my granddaughter said I felt like a slave now I know how a slave really felt. The two following days as I threw up my hands as I pondered the thought over and over and within my mind just how anyone could do this, as both of her supervisors were of the opposite race of that of an African American, at that moment I said here we go again. Than it came as clear as day that we the older folks are not showing our kids the responsibility, and the appreciation from both side of the spectrum of working and doing a good job, as we have a mentality of cheating the young kids, and disrespecting them, in our own special way. How do we think they would learn anything and why they don't appreciate the majority of the older folks, and the races around them? So if we are looking at the past and the future can we really say anything has change to govern and assess that everyone is on the same page that of equal rights for all, when we move on in applying our laws to meet the standard of social wants when it comes to our youth. We already have shown that we aren't able to maintain the social security administration, hence we are interjecting a well known theory that when they reach a certain age we would have spend the entire fund supposedly earmarked for them and their future.
Page 6 So if this is true than they are looking at us the voters and the defender of human right as being out of step, or hypocrites, with a known society of doing the right thing for the nation. We can see that the laws being implemented to date, stresses the ill treatment of our youth from being considered an adult when crime is involved, they can fight our wars at the age of eighteen, but we don't appreciate them until they are twentyone. And if there isn't a treatment of crimes we are discarding daily with imposed laws that would magnify their sentence, and treat them as an adult in some cases. I had a kid who took a lighter out of his local neighborhood store. The lighter cost 69 cent but because of the suppose severity of the crime that of stealing he was given 80-hour of community service. Of cause we shouldn't condone the action of stealing. But what are we displaying to them when we are doing the same thing that of evading our taxes not being responsible for what we feel is the correct thing no matter how small it maybe. Parents saying say you are seven years old so I don't have to pay for you on the bus, or any other public facility or event we may attend. Aren't we setting standards of laws for the adults who are given a slap on the hand and they pursue life as if nothing had ever happen, as we make a mass race to the local theater to view them on the big screen. This can be seen in the media as various individuals are continually being arrested and then they are given a minute' sentence in jail they are hidden away for view of the media and us the forgiving adults of society. So why don't we go back to a previous date in history when children under the eighteenth-century of English law. As to how they divided into three sections: legal articles, felonious court cases with child victims and the felonious cases with juvenile defendants. It identifies significant differences between the legal treatment of children in eighteenth-century philosophical legal treatises and actual court treatment. It also suggests that children maintained significantly fewer rights than adults under this system.
Page 7 Though children were theoretically included in all English laws, they could not testify in court and were more likely to be convicted of criminal offences than their adult counterparts. So if we don't scrutinize the law and apply them accordingly that we will all ways have those who are distant from the truth that we aren't trying justify what we want by mandating rules that we know we will not follow. It must be a unity among all parities that of the youth and the adults, and equal right for them all. So that they don't experience a deployable life and the lessons transpose that inner belief that they the African American child is difference because of their past history, if I as an adult can feel the wrath of prior prejudices that was set in place what are they experiencing in their short adult life. So the heading that I used doesn't really depict term that of “The suicide of the African American race� but the overall experience we feel and how we convey those experiences to our youth. We must be adamant in addressing our celestial past in a positive light not the under the breath tactic or saying that we may use, in private. Oh we want be militant as if this is some sense of our authority towards another people but make them aware of their surround and to act accordingly. As each race has their moment to give a sermon on the relationship of the African American and any other race that will attempt to hold us back. We must instill the respect of our offspring's that they do mean something in this world. I can't say that I wasn't given any information relating to our ancestors during my childhood, unless it came from some book we were reading in school, and if we did we didn't apply it to everyday life, and it wasn't given directly but indirectly as it was forced from the side as if it was mayonnaise on a sandwich. So I wonder if experiences and book learning can contribute to the condition our kids are in today as some sort of inferior complex as I stated previously. It just can be unless we are going through an instinct of realizing the past in some way that is a carryover from our ancestral past, as an inner subconscious of the souls long gone. So how did our youth come to the conclusion that they don't care about anything especially when it's connect to our former history, of slavery.
Page 8 We can see the self-destruction, in lyrics and in movement, hostility toward ourselves as a race, our demeanor towards our women, demeanor towards our history, towards not wanting to educate ourselves just a complete freefall state of mind, calling us what the master called us when we were weary of that 16-hour day. It will take those kids who outnumber the radical so called nonmilitant but those who are in a state of minds are set on killing themselves and their race, because they don't have the quest for life. Most of us will start our education with our children, and hopefully they will utilize the information that you tutored them in their entire life. I'm aware that it will be difficult to obtain the gains do us, unless it's in an overtime assessment of the wrongs we have endured, and retribution isn't on the table, and if any impeded problem arises hopefully we will be at an pinnacle of ours life that we can say oh that was the past we no longer have to deal with anyone trying to hold us back no matter where it sprouted from. So we will continue to have to deal with folks like Glen Beck and others; most ordinary folks will see his bigotry, and racist remarks about anyone that is difference than he is. At my age of 72 years old I have seen it all. This man has some sort of mental problem that he doesn't realize know he has. It must be, and should be observed by the normal folks, when he is rampaging when it comes to any person that's difference than he, he is Johnny on the spot with an analogy and we have those wishing to place their foot in his footprints, I'm so glad that he isn't running for office of any kind. Then we will see all the candy coated bigots emerging from the dirt of hell. It will take another generation to rid the nation of all of these leftover racist folks that still exist in this world today. And maybe our kids will rid themselves of deep hidden feelings that they aren't from a race of great people, Kings and Queens and not from the gutter of hell. Why must we all not see the world in the same lightness, as a creation of a utopia state of mind?
Page 9 In the summer we see the blooming flowers, in the fall we see the leaves turn from green to a pale pastel yellow, red, and gold as the winter months come along with its snow blanking it whiteness as it covers the land, and the rabbits and deer among us as they prepare for Christmas display of a happy scene. If I can see this than why can't our kids accept the creation especially that they aren't considered to be of the downtrodden of all human beings. If they would only observe a unified world each praying to their god who is the creator of all we see. The birds circle above taking in a perfect formation in a world with its imperfect people, causing mayhem along the way. So my final note would be just ordinary word of advice as to how to treat our youth, at least the one with significant problems. We need to treat them as if they were an onion, peeling each layer off until we have reached a portion of their deep inner self of having vision and future aspirations of life. Because if we don’t open a way of life for our kids they will find another avenue to gear their life, It could be drugs, which will show them as being someone with power, and the atrocities of gangs, and drugs just to wipe the instilled photos of him and their ancestors. And even if some who are so out of date when it comes to rap culture, because they have no understanding about the message being conveyed through music.
If we listen and take heed in the scope of the message, which is a mainstream of directional process, that of appreciating ourselves as a person. And to inspire and encourage the youth to be proud of themselves and their race, and the selfdestruction will end.